I SKIP DINNER. LYING IN BED, I PUSH ASIDE ALL THE LOOSE PAGES OF screenplay, schedules, storyboard, sketches, and whatnot. I take out the Harvard brochure they sent me that I keep opening and closing and trying to forget about but can’t throw away.
I’ve been keeping it under my bed like a dirty secret. I don’t know.
The images of the campus are attractive—aggressively diverse groups of friends lounging together under blossoming trees in impossible sunlight. Students throwing Frisbees framed by Victorian Gothic architecture, poring over stacks of handsome old books speckled by light through stained glass. Students sitting in comfy-looking lecture rooms staring ahead, fascinated, pens between their fingers.
I try to picture myself there: going to classes, typing on a MacBook during lectures on Milton and Chaucer, living in a dorm. Going to parties on Friday nights holding red plastic cups filled with warm keg beer; pretending I like hip-hop.
I’ve had a hard time picturing myself at Harvard, probably because I can’t picture myself anywhere. My whole life has seemed temporal, one fast-moving train connecting to the next. I’ve made do with whatever reality was presented to me until I could move on again. But, I don’t know, I keep looking at the stupid brochure.
And I can’t pretend it has nothing to do with Hayley; seeing those unfinished college applications like nicked dreams. I think it would hurt her if I didn’t go, if she watched me get swallowed by Moldavia forever.
After all, her phone call is what really brought me back.
That’s why I could never bring myself to call Harvard and tell them I was taking a gap year. It’s July already; it’s too late now to postpone matriculation. I guess I figured I was either going to go or not go at all—it was now or never.
I needed to have Harvard remain an option. Because I know at Moldavia, one year can easily turn into ten years.
But I also know I haven’t fulfilled the terms of my dad’s will yet.
Hayley knocks on the door and slips inside. She’s got a sandwich for me on a plate. When she sees the Harvard brochure lying open on my chest, she smiles.
“How did you know I was hungry?” I say, reaching for the sandwich.
“Because you didn’t eat anything all day.”
I gobble the sandwich down, thinking we’re like an old couple already. Hayley lies down next to me. She takes the brochure and flips through it herself.
I brush the crumbs onto the empty plate, wipe my mouth, and put the plate on the floor. I lay my head on Hayley’s chest, curling up to her, and we look through the brochure together. We laugh at some of the posed photographs inside.
“You never called Harvard, did you?” she says after a beat.
I don’t say anything, but I figured she’d know. Hayley always knows what’s up. I just lie there, listening to her heartbeat.
Hayley closes the brochure and rests it on the floor, next to my bed. “I had an awesome time,” she says, running her fingers through my hair. “It was tough work, and I love that character. I don’t think acting is my game, though. I’m very much a producer.”
“You’re many things. Whatever you want to be.”
“I like being on the other end, watching everything come together.” She tickles my knee. “But having a sensitive, articulate director with a real vision felt like a gift.”
“My mom wants me to go to Harvard.”
I feel her breathing change. Her hand pauses in my hair.
“I saw her,” I say. “I didn’t tell you. She had a bad reaction to seeing me.”
“Oh. I’m sorry,” she says softly.
“I really enjoyed directing the movie. But I think I want to see what else I love doing. I want to experience as much as I can before the lights could go out on me.”
“Then that’s what you should do,” says Hayley.
I want to ask her if she’d come with me if I go to college. But I know the answer already, and I don’t want to hear it out loud.
After Hayley’s mom died, I might have been the only one in the world who could have consoled her. And I wasn’t here. She couldn’t bring herself to undo my self-imposed excommunication just for her. She couldn’t break me out of my new world—not until it was my own dad who was dying. I want to aspire to be as strong and selfless as she is. Hayley is my hero. “You know I’m in love with you, right?” I tell her.
“Yes,” she says playfully, nibbling my ear. “And I you, Alastair.”
Once we review the dailies of Gavin’s big scene, everyone realizes we have what we need. Principal photography is finished. It took nineteen days. I approve the next Crepuscular Dusk, which, because of filming, had to be postponed. It’ll be combined with a belated July Fourth celebration, so that should be fun for everyone.
We’ve all seen the raw footage of Alastair & Abigail, so we know we have something pretty awesome on our hands. I find myself starting to pull away from the crush of Moldavia. I task Oren with overseeing post-production, and tell him he can have Final Cut, which thrills him to no end.
Jude and Mistress Moonshadow seem to be working out. Jude never returns to our room, and they show up to the commissary for every meal holding hands. Despite their age difference and all, something about them is just sweet. It boils down to tiny moments: Mistress Moonshadow whispering something to Jude over dinner, and him laughing so hard (something only I used to be able to make him do), resting his head against her neck, closing his eyes as she presses her cheek against his. You can’t argue with that.
I stay in bed for a while, catching up on sleep and reading about Colin Hanks. Hayley and I spend virtually every night together. We don’t talk about the future, or the studio, or whether or not I’m going to college. We just hang out and watch movies and chat about bullshit. She makes me laugh.
I skip Crepuscular Dusk. I feign a cold. Hayley, Oren, Jude, and everyone else attends. But truthfully, I don’t want to get sucked into this world any more in case I decide to leave it. Oren got fireworks. I watch them explode over the east lawn in red and gold, flooding my room with fiery light, flashing off all the pages of my printed-out research on Harvard.
Cassidy Blackwell, the founder and CEO of Rusty Blade Films, postpones on us twice. He’s stuck in Vancouver. No one knows why. Then, about four weeks after we wrap production, Franklin sends me a message one morning: today is the day Cassidy will finally be visiting Moldavia, and I should probably make an appearance.
Sure enough, right after lunch, I watch through an upstairs window as Cassidy’s canary-yellow Porsche rolls through the gates. He sort of fox-trots out like a cartoon tornado, shaking the hand of everyone in sight.
He’s youngish—David Schwimmer with a sharper jawline—his thick black hair slicked back, wearing a dark chambray shirt, skinny jeans rolled up in cuffs, green-tinted sunglasses. He checks his watch three times before he even gets inside the castle. I roll my eyes and head downstairs.
I meet Cassidy Blackwell in the hunting room, where he’s having coffee with Franklin. Franklin introduces me and adds, proudly, that I was accepted into Harvard. “Yale,” says Cassidy, standing up to shake my hand. That’s literally what he says: Yale. And then: “Call me Cass.”
“Nice to meet you.” He’s such a bro, but I keep my tone polite.
“You too, dude. Wow, I’m such a big fan. I must have seen Zombie Children of the Harvest Sun eighteen thousand times!” He’s sort of hopping about the room. His vibe is all childlike and bright, like Jude’s was—like everyone’s is, I guess, when they first see this place.
Franklin hands me a cup of coffee. I sit on the couch, facing Cass. I’m not wearing shoes—green-striped socks with small holes in them. Business casual.
“That movie inspired Zombie Eclipse, I’ll totally admit it,” he says. “Put Rusty Blade on the map. Put Lana Polari on the map. She’s starring in the Scorpion movies now—billion-dollar franchise for Paramount. Chuck Baum directed the first one—did you see it?—great guy, we go surfing. Holt Van Wynn is great in them—good actor, good-looking guy, friend of mine, I bought his house in Malibu, now he’s dating Lana. She won’t text me back anymore.” He chuckles, slurps coffee. “Anyway. Eclipse spawned our first franchise. We started in limited release, then went wide after great word-of-mouth and a smart ad campaign. Grossed eighty-two mill domestically. Our production budget was four hundred K! One of the most profitable horrors in history.”
Having a conversation with Cassidy is like having a conversation with someone that contains unrelenting oral hyperlinks. Everything he says subreferences something else: some achievement of his, some hit movie, a quick name drop of a celebrity he knows. It gives me a sharp ache in the center of my forehead. Also, his cologne, or whatever, is super-intense: like pine trees burning by a seaside cabin.
“The grounds are stunning,” he says, taking a sip of coffee, craning his neck to look out the window. “When we were filming Backpacker 7 in Puerto Rico—film was set in Turks and Caicos, but the tax breaks in Rico, man, we saved a bundle—film grossed two hundred mill worldwide—put Julie Heathen on the map; she’s helming Sony’s reboot of Crosshairs now—they paid her fifteen mill up front just for the first one. We dated briefly. Doesn’t wear underwear. Anyway. We shot some of the movie in La Perla—Old San Juan? Kept running into Justin Timberlake, great guy, friend of mine, always sweaty for some reason, I bought his house in the Hamptons. But for the scenes set in the kingpin’s house . . . we were filming at the villa of this, like, Spanish pop star—dude is like a billionaire and he’s twelve years old, great guy, can never understand a word he says, even when he sings, even in English—it had grounds like this—just, like—endless green.” He leans in. “Are you gonna go to Harvard?”
I smile politely, but there’s no way I’m telling Cass about my future plans.
“Well,” he says, contemplating his coffee mug. “It is such a thrill to be here.” His tone is suddenly nostalgic. “Moldavia movies meant so much to me as a kid. Like everyone else, I always wondered what went on over here.”
“I hope we can count on your discretion!” says Franklin with a friendly laugh, crossing his leg. “No photos inside the walls.”
“No, no!” says Cassidy, waving his arms around. “I would never! Never! I have like seven iPhones and three iPads, none of them on me. I’ve scattered them across three continents. I always forget stuff in hotels. There might be one, my girlfriend’s, in the car. Abbie Strauss. British actress. Starred in that Chimney Sweeper miniseries on PBS?”
I frown. “What’s it called?”
“Chimney Sweeper. It’s about a female chimney sweeper during the Blitz. Won an Emmy. Big hit. Know her? Watch it? Man, is she hot. Bit burned out, though . . . sudden fame, you know. She’s resting. . . .” He cups his hands over his mouth and whispers: “Rehab.” He gets up and starts pacing the room.
“Can we get you more coffee?” Franklin asks.
“I’m good.” He sticks his face real close to one of the mounted deer heads, laughs, then turns back to me with a grin. “This room, man.”
I smile back. “I know.”
He walks over to me and puts his hands behind his back, staring down at his expensive “work boots,” swaying a little, like he’s about to be chewed out by his headmaster for setting off cherry bombs in the commons. “So, I heard you’ve been working on something?”
I look at Franklin. He nods back. “Yes. I . . . directed a sequel to Zombie Children.”
“Really?” says Cass, eyebrows a mile high.
“Really.”
“Are you in it as well?”
“Hayley and I both reprise our roles.”
“Now I’m really interested. I bet she’s hot now, huh?”
I stop smiling at him.
He looks around the room. “Zombie Children has amassed quite the cult following. A sequel would be nothing to sneeze at. I was in talks with your dad, as you know—a true genius, by the way, and I’m so so sorry, by the way—about selling Moldavia to Rusty Blade. The facilities here could use a bit of an upgrade. But this estate, where all these Moldavia classics were filmed—I mean, it’s truly one of a kind. The secrecy you’ve kept up all these years added value to that. The myth. You could rack up tens of millions a year just in fanboy tourism.”
I turn to Franklin. “You think?”
“Rusty Blade’s offer would be for the estate itself,” says Cassidy. “The grounds and castle. As well as the Moldavia name, and the rights to the library.”
My dad kept the negatives for all his films and the rights to his entire library. This would be giving up the studio and our family legacy—the very soul of Moldavia.
“This is all very preliminary, you understand,” says Cass. “I have to talk to my board, have the estate appraised. My plan would be to keep the necessary brass in place, and use the Moldavia imprint to release slightly more upmarket horrors. Creature features—but more contemporary in style than what Lucien was making, with a more aggressive marketing strategy behind them—get them on the festival circuit, put new releases in theaters, expand the brand, develop original programming for streaming services. That’s where everything’s headed now. And we’d leave the castle behind, and move all production to L.A.”
“I’m assuming there are no guarantees about keeping everyone’s jobs here.”
“The necessary brass, like I said,” says Cass. “This is business. Hollywood.”
“Right.”
“Look: Our films do very well, but audiences tire of the same formula after a while. We’re in preprod for Backpacker 9 right now. But I’ll tell you: Backpacker 8 did not make as much money as Backpacker 7. And I know Moldavia has been struggling to find its own audience lately—young people on tablets. Streaming. Times change. The marketplace shifts.” He snaps his fingers to accompany all the points he’s making. “Video games now often have better storytelling than Hollywood movies.”
“Well, definitely better than the Backpacker films,” I say.
Cassidy laughs. “All I’m saying . . . we’ve all gotta work harder and harder these days. So this deal could be mutually beneficial.”
I clear my throat. “How much are we talking?”
“I would very much like to see what you’ve been working on.”
There’s a pause.
Franklin sets down his coffee cup. “We can arrange for you to view some of the footage,” he says. “If it’s okay with Dario.”
“It’s fine with me,” I say. “We have a rough cut, actually. Or so I’m told.”
Cassidy leans in to me. “What’s the title?”
“Alastair & Abigail: A Zombie Love Story.”
“Man!” Cassidy claps his hands together. “I love it.”
Franklin arranges a viewing of a rough cut of Alastair & Abigail for Cassidy in the screening room. Two hours later, Cassidy Blackwell, who is wearing quite the poker face, meets Franklin, Hayley, Oren, and me, in the library of the Lugosi Wing. Something about Cassidy’s energy is a lot different now.
We sit at the oblong table. Cassidy introduces himself to Hayley and Oren. They both give him a curt hello. For reasons unknown, Oren is wearing a vintage World War II flight suit, which makes a lot of noise every time he moves. “Love the getup!” says Cassidy.
“Appreciated,” says Oren stoically, the old leather squeaking.
We wait politely while Cassidy stares down at the table, preparing whatever he’s going to say, lost in deep thought, whatever “deep thought” is for him (probably images of naked blonde chicks with fake boobs on surfboards). Then he looks at me. “Not gonna lie. You edit that thing right, you could really shake up the genre. That’s a game changer.”
I was confident, but his reaction still surprises me. “You think?”
“Man, that scene where Ferdinand is banished is powerful stuff. It elevates the movie, puts it on a different level. Just the kind of thing I’ve been looking for.”
It’s hard to hate him as much now when that’s the scene that truly moved him.
“Auto-horrors,” he says, gazing out the window, devising a marketing plan on the spot. “We all know what made Zombie Children such a cult phenomenon. It wasn’t just your performance, it was what the movie was—this real-life father-son relationship unraveling on-screen. It was mesmerizing. And here you’ve gone and filmed a response—an autobiographical horror. That’s something new.” He grins at me. His teeth have definitely been whitened recently. “The writing, acting, directing, it needs some reeling in, sure, but the talent is there. The potential is something I can’t ignore. You have a great visual sense. I’d argue for less poetry and more T&A, though. Gotta sell tickets, after all.”
He means Tits and Ass. I look over at Hayley. She’s stone-faced.
We all sit there, silently, waiting for what Cassidy Blackwell will say next. “I didn’t get along with my father either,” he says quietly, staring at his hands.
“Yeah?” I try not to burst out laughing at his daddy-issues bullshit, even though I’m well aware of my own.
“You’re talented,” he tells me. “And I’m attracted to talent, what can I say? And you have a potential hit on your hands here—maybe even a rebooted franchise if you rethink that ending.”
No one says anything.
He runs his finger along the table as if he’s writing an SOS message in blood. “Depending on how our negotiations go, and the appraisal of the estate, I’m imagining an offer in the forty-to-sixty-mill range.”
When you first hear a figure like that, everything just stops and your vision gets wavy, and you realize that if you were animated there would be dollar signs in your eyes. It wipes out everything, all rationality. But then you think about all the debt, the creditors, the back salaries owed, and everything stops rumbling, postquake.
I take a breath and maintain my composure. “The terms of my dad’s will directed us to sell the studio to Rusty Blade if we weren’t solvent—”
Franklin whispers: “Or likely to be solvent—”
“—within six months,” I add. “We have some time left. Little more than half, actually . . . but I’m assuming you made some sort of offer to my dad before his death.”
“I did,” says Cassidy.
“One moment.” I lean over to Franklin. He whispers in my ear that the offer is generous, meaning we’d be able to pay off debts, all the crew and staff who have been working for free, and it would help get Moldavia out of the red. But we’d still have an uncertain future.
I turn back to Cassidy. “You imagine an offer in the forty-to-sixty-million range—which is a wide range, by the way. That’s in the neighborhood of what you offered my dad, I’m assuming: a senile old man writing his will, trying to distribute his assets, pay everyone off, not leave his family in any debt. And that’s the offer you came prepared with today, I’m sure. But now that you’ve seen a rough cut of Alastair & Abigail, what would your offer be?”
“Well,” says Cassidy, tapping the table. “Are we negotiating?”
“I don’t know. Are we?”
“There’s a lot to be considered still,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows, expectantly.
Cassidy takes off his sunglasses. “Around a hundred mill.”
I look at Franklin. He nods at me. We’d pay everyone off and be millionaires.
“But,” says Cass, “that’s for everything. Including distribution rights to Alastair & Abigail and all its potential sequels, as well as for you.”
“Me?”
“If we acquire Moldavia, my stipulation would be that you come work for me—and operate Moldavia Films, which would be a banner of Rusty Blade. And I’d contract you to write and direct the first five features, including at least two more sequels of Alastair & Abigail. I’d allow you to choose your top brass. But we’d have final say on what gets made and what gets released.”
Oren and Hayley draw in their breath.
That’s a lot of money, obviously. But he wants to buy my future. He wants me to spit out more Alastairs—except they’d be his corrupted, sleazy version of the character that’s pretty much defined my life; the character that I just reclaimed for myself. My cult following would inflame further, into something sordid that I’d never be able to shake. Our family legacy would be tainted. Plus I’m pretty sure I’d be miserable working for him. I didn’t come back to Moldavia and nearly lose my mind dealing with this place (and filming Alastair & Abigail) just so Cassidy could own me, and own everyone here.
I sit back in my seat. “Thank you, Cassidy, but I don’t think we’re interested.”
Everyone exhales.
“Before I got here, all I wanted to do was sell Moldavia,” I tell him. “This place was meaningless to me. I ran away from here, and stayed away for much of my life. But now . . . I don’t feel the same way.”
Cassidy doesn’t seem surprised. He just puts his sunglasses back on, cool as a cucumber. “I understand.”
“Thing is”—I look around at everyone—“none of us are just a cog in the machine anymore. My dad’s gone. We all created something, and we did it together. This isn’t just a movie studio. It’s a part of who we are. It’s . . . a family. It’s our family. I know that’s kind of corny—”
“Totally get it,” says Cassidy. He points at me: “You’ll remain studio chief?”
I laugh and shake my head. “No way.”
Cassidy drums his fingers on the table. “Interesting.”
“I don’t deserve that,” I say. “I’m going to appoint two chiefs—Oren and Hayley. They’ll run this place better than I ever could.”
Cassidy stands, extending his hand. “Well. This was a pleasure. And I meant what I said: You’re a real talent. I’ll let you have it out with your cohorts. And we’ll talk again, before those six months are up. But by then, of course, my offer may have changed.”
“Of course,” I say, standing up to shake his hand. “I understand.”
“It was nice meeting you all,” he says, patting down his pants, as Gavin leads him out of the room. A few moments later we hear the roar of a V8 twin-turbo engine zooming out of the gates. Franklin, Hayley, and Oren all turn to look at me.
“Just so you know,” says Oren, coughing into his fist, “if we’re not solvent in just a few months . . . and we’re forced to sell to him . . . his offer will be forty to sixty million less than if we sell to him now and he gets the rights to Alastair & Abigail.”
“Right. He wants total control over the film. And he’s hedging his bets that we don’t know what we’re doing from a marketing standpoint.”
“What do you mean?” says Oren.
“He probably already has some idea what the castle and estate are worth. And now he knows we have a potential blockbuster on our hands. Otherwise he wouldn’t have upped his offer after he saw the rough cut. He’s assuming there are cobwebs in the marketing office, which a few weeks ago there were. But now we have a half million followers on Twitter. Did you know that? We have fans out there.”
“We have no time,” says Oren.
“We have some time,” says Hayley.
“What do you suggest?” asks Oren.
“The movie is in the can. Cut it fast. And then reach out to Dad’s old Hollywood contacts and find a U.S. distributor. Get a deal in place. Put the film on the festival circuit. There’s time to make at least some of those deadlines. Then hop on a plane and sell distribution rights in all the foreign markets. It’s a risk. But it’s not a fantasy.”
“No, it’s not a fantasy,” Franklin concurs.
“Otherwise, look, we can just sell the studio to him now. Everyone gets paid. We leave the castle, retire to Florida or wherever, and live comfortably. People find new jobs, begin fresh lives, and Cassidy gets to use the Moldavia name to make his upmarket contemporary creature horrors with more tits and ass.”
“So basically, sell our souls,” says Oren.
“Welcome to Hollywood,” I tell him.
Oren looks at the ceiling and closes his eyes. “Say good-bye to Moldavia forever. . . . Wow,” he says, shaking his head, and then he looks at me with a frown. “Where’s Florida?”
“Cassidy knows this business,” I tell them. “You saw his reaction to Alastair & Abigail. Things turned out well with this sequel. We got lucky.”
“It is a big risk,” says Oren. “But I can’t imagine selling Moldavia to someone like Cassidy Blackwell if there’s even a chance we can make it on our own.”
“There’s a real chance,” says Franklin. “I saw the rough cut too. If we market this right, we could have a real hit on our hands. We could come out of this on top.”
“Dario,” says Hayley, scooting her chair out from the table, “you don’t want to be studio chief?”
“No, it should be you guys.”
“It should be Hayley,” says Oren, looking at her. “I’m comfortable just producing, writing, lending a hand wherever one is needed. I think that’s best.”
I make a knighting gesture at Hayley. “Then it’s you.”
The disbelieving, overwhelmed, rapturous look on Hayley’s face tells me that this is what she always wanted. “Oh boy,” she says, waving a hand in front of her face, fighting back tears, “I did not expect this. I’m honored. Thank you.”
“Dario,” says Franklin, “are you going to college?”
“Have we met the conditions of my father’s will?”
Franklin clears his throat. “Solvency means our assets are greater than our liability. However, the wording of your father’s will was very particular: You are free to leave the estate within the six-month period if the likelihood of solvency is achieved. And I believe, with Alastair & Abigail, we have achieved that.”
“I’d like to actually study film. And English. And history. And economics, I think. Psychology too. I don’t know who I am yet. I want the opportunity to find out.”
Franklin nods at me, all proud. Oren gives me a hearty thumbs-up. Hayley is glowing. In a way, it was Moldavia that made me realize how much more I want to experience, how much more I want to learn.
“We should have a board of directors,” says Hayley, “like any normal studio has.”
Everyone agrees. So we discuss a new structure for Moldavia. Oren, Franklin, Hayley, and I could be on the board to make decisions and green-light projects. My dad is gone now, so there doesn’t have to be one lone visionary leading the studio into a cloud of nihilistic madness. This way, I’d always be connected to Moldavia, but not bound to it.
“We should hire outside directors,” I suggest.
This gets an enthusiastic response. We talk about hiring all the hotshot indie guys from all the hot festivals. The Moldavia name still carries weight, and young genre filmmakers know that. Maybe once the cash-flow situation is resolved, Moldavia could retain the castle and grounds as home base but find ways to shoot on location, in more far-off, exotic locales.
Meanwhile, Cassidy’s ideas about “fanboy tourism” weren’t so far out. If shooting schedules were planned way ahead of time to accommodate it, tour groups could come in to view the grounds while production teams shoot around them. We’d be shedding our much-guarded secrecy, but tours could be a great revenue stream for the studio. Things start to come together in a new way—because we’re rethinking what Moldavia really is, what it could be, and what it means to us and to horror fans.
We decide to officially announce all the changes to everyone at Moldavia during the next Crepuscular Dusk.
After our meeting, I walk across the eastern lawn to clear my head, and find myself on this hill. There was a moment here I remember very well. We had finished an all-night shoot of Zombie Children, and it had gone well. The crew cleared out quick, and my dad didn’t immediately run off somewhere, so we were the only two left. That was rare.
The sun was coming up. We stopped for a moment. He put his hand on my shoulder. And we just watched the sunrise, side by side like that, without ever saying a word. Then it was over. The grounds were alight with sweeps of neon pink, shining brilliantly off the windows of the Lugosi Wing, and my dad turned and walked swiftly back toward the castle, while I hurried to catch up.
And they say you never remember the good stuff.